


oh god i'm closing my teeth (around this liquor wet lime)

by antivenom



Category: Deadpool - All Media Types, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: ...Kinda, Alcohol, Angst, Desert Island Fic, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Humor, M/M, Slow Burn, like...a lot of it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:20:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25026064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antivenom/pseuds/antivenom
Summary: Deadpool, Spider-Man, a magical deserted island, and a curse from the Enchantress. What could go wrong? (A lot. A lot can go wrong.)
Relationships: Peter Parker/Wade Wilson
Comments: 78
Kudos: 129





	1. Day One

**Author's Note:**

> Self indulgence galore! Also exploring how to peel apart Peter from Spider-Man while peeling Wade from Deadpool. Any Wade, any Peter, any universe. 
> 
> Also, non-uniform length chapters! The good news is that a lot of this is written (update schedule!!), the bad news is that not all of it is (update schedule might end up deviating!), title from sober by lorde
> 
> okay, down to business:

Wade wakes overwarm and uninjured, buzzing into the simple circumstance of sleep.

He’s enjoying the heat of a weighted blanket and the fuzz of sleep until somewhere in his mushy oatmeal mind he realizes that he one (1) hadn’t gone to sleep with a weighted blanket and two (2) also hadn’t gone to sleep at all.

Knockoff Loki with more tits and less Tom had been asking for trouble all over town, which, when prompted, Wade would say was probably not a good thing. He and Spidey had cornered her and were about to win, when she’d started babbling about how annoying they were and how they were getting in her way, and he’d ended up here. Apparently.

He hasn’t opened his eyes yet to determine what _here_ is. It’s comfy. The air is heavy; humid with a promise of heat. So it’s morning, then. There is a brine to the breeze, but not the heavy winter-laden air of the North Atlantic. Beneath his back is a knot of something, rope or otherwise, and if he concentrates enough he can feel gentle movement, as if not lying on something stationary.

Then there is the case of the weighted blanket, which is not a blanket at all, in fact, but judging by the feeling of lips and moist breath just above Wade’s left nipple and the hard planes of bone digging into him at various parts of his body, the weight is a man.

A man and the ocean and Enchantress. It spells enough trouble that Wade opens his eyes.

Cool sunlight is the first thing he registers, and then everything else: two ancient palm trees, between which is fixed the hammock he’s lying in, a bricked patio, and a two story glass and steel beach bungalow.

Then, the ocean.

It sweeps into the shore across a hundred or so meters of white-beige expanse of perfect sand. The water is the type of blue that you only see in advertisements, calm. Wade wonders if there is such a thing as the opposite of a snow globe, because that is, apparently, where he is.

Nothing else to look at, or take in, just Wade and the ocean and the man on his chest.

Said chest is technically bare, though Wade is wearing a button up shirt, just all the buttons are undone. Every bit of his damage is flaunted for the world to see (or for the guy to sleep on, whatever.) The man is not more than six inches shorter than Wade, but is curled up and tangled around Wade like he is actually several feet smaller. Wade can’t tell much about his face, being as it is pressed into his skin, but his hair is a mess of brown, and the Enchantress had been kind enough to grant him a t-shirt, so he’s about 40% more clothed than Wade himself is.

Wade’s awakening must have charged them both from their sleep, because the man stirs, a little, mouth opening a bit wider, legs kicking out, and then Wade is biting two hands into two shoulders, the heat of breath and the warmth of skin too much for his sleep-ridden body to fight away.

“Hey, stranger.” Wade says. “Wakey bakey!” He shakes the shoulders beneath his hands, maybe too harshly, but there’s a strange bubbling in his stomach that he wants to get rid of. This involves removing the obstacle first.

“Hmm. Wade?” The man asks, and hoo boy this guy knows him? Yikes!

“Get up, upchuck.” Wade demands, and the man shifts, again, legs coming wide, thighs on either side of Wade’s hips, and then his eyes open, his hand plants into Wade’s stomach, and he lifts himself up, a little, to look at Wade in the face.

There’s a second.

“Gah!” The man squeals, and jerks away, feet tangling in the netting as he does. In a way that is much too complicated for anyone, ever to repeat, he flips himself out of the hammock, one foot still caught in it at an untoward angle.

There goes that bubbly feeling. “Sorry. Too early for the horror show.” Wade says, realizing too belatedly that he’s a hideous monster freak that nobody wants to wake up with, let alone wake up _on_. Why is he half naked? Who’d had that bright fuckin idea?

“No, no, holy cow, how did we fall asleep together like that?” The man demands, and Wade gives him a weird look. That’s when the dude’s hand flies up so fast he slaps himself in the face. “Gah!” He squeals again.

“Someone here’s crazier’n me.” Wade mutters. “O-kay. Well. Now that that’s settled, I’m Wade Wilson and we’re trapped together on an island vacation!” He presents the world around them like a game show host. “Welcome to the shit show! Also. You miiight wanna tell me who you are. I would hate to kill you after we canoodled.”

“Canoodle!” The man repeats, and though the guy is freaking the fuck out Wade is immediately aware that this is a deflection. “Oh my god.” The man says. “Oh my god, Wade, where are we? How long were we asleep? How did we--”

“Did I not just clearly state that we’re on an island vacation?” Wade says, fixing an arm under himself to sit up and peer at this odd man seated in the sand. “Duh.”

The man fixes him with a Look, something so intimately familiar to Wade that he has to stop himself from bursting out with laughter. Seriously? He's going to make it that obvious?

“I didn’t sign up for an island vacation.” Grumpy-Man says.

Wade grins. “Looks like you’re gonna have to take some personal time away from webslinging, Webslinger.”

“What.” He says. “I mean. Uh. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Wade snorts. “Spidey, your look of utter judgement comes through the mask too well. Might want to get that checked out. Could be contagious.” He says, starting to grow more and more uncomfortable because the guy fumbling through the sand looks like he’s about to have a mental breakdown.

Which, come on Spidey. Save some for the rest of us.

Wade swallows around the greasy taste of his own discomfort and shoots, “Why didn’t you tell me you were so dreamy under there?”

Spidey just gapes at him. “How are you so--” he stops and says. “You’re wearing a Hawaiian shirt.”

Oh shit. He is. “Oh shit,” Wade says, pulling the pink and green thing from his body at the bottom to look at it. “I am.”

“How are you not freaking out about this?”

Wade sits forward and fits a hand around the ankle of Spider-Man’s trapped foot. Wade hasn’t had the legroom to ‘freak out’ about things since his skin went necrotic. When you can’t die, a lot of life gets put into a perspective that looks gray and tastes gray and suddenly, nothing really matters anymore.

Maybe that’s it.

Or maybe it’s something else.

Wade guesses, “I like the beach. Imma build me a sandcastle.” He squeezes Spider-Man’s ankle and unhooks the tangled foot. He releases it, and off-balance, Spidey rocks backward, one hand coming down into the sand to catch him.

“Okay, rude.” Spidey says.

“Okay, prude.”

“Shut up.” Spidey says. “So Enchantress?”

“A little OP in this universe, I guess, but yeah. Enchantress. So buckle in, baby, I think we might be stuck here.”

* * *

The beach bungalow, if that’s what you can even call it, is the nicest house Peter has ever seen.

He’s a poor city boy, and this is one of only a handful of times he’s ever left New York City. (Except he probably hasn’t left New York City and this is just a shared magical fever dream a la Enchantress that is draining him of his energy as it traps him and he’s eventually going to die here on the beach with Deadpool, who can’t die and will live here forever because he doesn’t care and doesn’t have anything to live or die for and he doesn’t care about ending the fight with Enchantress and--)

So, the beach house is a mansion. It’s not overwhelming at all, especially considering the fact that Enchantress had definitely sent them here to punish them. She’d been monologuing, and Peter had only been listening enough to figure out the best jokes to counter each of her sentences with. She wanted to win, and she wanted to do it in her usual brand of stupid way, and this time it actually worked. Because. Stuck. Here. With Deadpool.

Which, really, it’s not a ridiculous idea. Peter likes Wade, if you can get past the ten years he spent racking up killing points like he was in COD, or the fact that he’s an Avenger but he refuses to even try to be more likable or less annoying. Somehow that lands him in the same category as Spider-Man, so more often than not Steve makes the two of them team-up while everyone else ignores them. Which is offensive, because Peter is a lot funnier than Wade, also friendlier, and he’s a lot less murdery, even though that last one isn’t exactly required nowadays in Avenger-land. But yeah, when Wade is not trying to be the worst, he isn’t the worst, so more often than not Peter is at least vaguely willing to suck it up and team it up. But still. They don’t exactly get along. Wade is an ass and thinks he’s funnier than he is, and he also is _very comfortable killing people_ , have we mentioned that yet?

Anyway. The beach house is a mansion. It has an outdoor shower, one that Peter spends way too long marveling over. The thing is an open-air, pink marble structure with long, dark brown pieces of lumber, its spigot black and chrome. When Peter turns it on, the water is immediately hot. The house also has a modern kitchen and a grill and a living room. Upstairs, four bedrooms, two of which face the ocean.

Peter claims the one that’s decorated in various styles of white, thinking it would be a shame for Wade to inevitably ruin this one, and sits on the bed for a very long time trying to get his breathing under control.

He’d scoured the whole place, all of it looking perfectly normal, if not opulent. No magic words or old scripture that might teach them how to get out, or where they were, or how exactly they got here. Around the house is nothing but a driftwood walkway down the sand to the water in one direction. Behind it, dunes too large to see over.

Sand in every direction.

All they’ve got is a vague idea of who did it and why.

He wonders if Aunt May has noticed he’s missing. Or where Enchantress has stashed his and Wade’s body, or if she’s looked under Spider-Man’s mask, or if this is actually some magical place and he’s physically here. He tries to put together a list of how he might escape this place, but it’s magic. It won’t be as simple as a quinjet and hope.

He’s surprised, but not surprised, that in the end it’s going to be Deadpool that brings him down. It’s Wade’s fault, after all, that the two of them were together making quips, and his fault that the Enchantress wasn’t a fan and made the (correct) assumption that there was a way to get the two of them out of her way as well as annoy each other to death.

Peter presses the heels of his palms into his eyes and wills himself not to scream.

It’s then that he realizes that in working himself into a tizzy he’d completely forgotten about their food sources. Skimming his finger down the painted drywall, and then the staircase railing, he scoops himself together as he walks down the stairs to the kitchen.

The kitchen has gray appliances and gray granite countertops, a subway tile backsplash and plants, (plants!) alongside a starfish chandelier, but when Peter opens the fridge there’s no food.

Which. That might be a problem.

Wade is no longer anywhere to be found, which fine, that’s great. Whatever. It’s not like Peter needs a friend through all this, but it would be great if for once Deadpool could act a shred like a normal person or at least offer a little bit of solidarity here. Instead he’s screwed off into wherever, even though the woke up on a deserted magic island less than twenty minutes ago.

Peter leans his head to the cool stainless steel of the fridge and says, “I just want some chicken nuggets.” in a pathetic little voice, and, almost in that same moment, his senses ratchet up and then die all the same.

He whirls, and steaming on the counter is a stack of dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets.

His eyes widen as he approaches. They smell right, and when he picks it up, they look and feel right, but there’s no telling that this is going to kill him or not.

Besides that, what about the law of conservation of mass? Does no one respect physics anymore?

“Deadpool!” He shouts. “Hey, Wade!” Hopefully he hasn’t gone too far. It wouldn’t be a good idea to wander far without Peter, but Wade secretly hates Spider-Man and wants him to suffer, probably, so Peter honestly wouldn’t put it past him.

It takes a moment, but the man in question pops his head through the back sliding glass door. “Honey,” He says, “I’m home.” And then, “And look what I found!” It’s a bucket hat that matches the Hawaiin shirt he still hasn’t bothered to button.

Peter has never seen this much of him before. Not that, you know, he expected to see this much of Wade. Or, well, people in general. Not that he wanted to see that impressive musculature on full display, or even half naked, and yeah, Peter is going to end that train of thought right now.

“Will you eat these?” Peter gestures toward the nugs, ignoring the bucket hat and the abs, oh god. “I want to know if they’re poisoned.”

Wade’s brow creases. “Ten minutes in and he already tries to kill me.” He says. “I know we’d make a murderer out of you yet, pumpkin.” He moves into the room. Peter wonders what he was doing, and also, maybe, what’s been going through his mind today. If Deadpool is to believed, there was nothing at all going through his head, no thought. Deadpool likes to put off the air of one who does nothing but simply vibe.

“Where’d you get these?” Wade asks.

“They appeared out of thin air.”

“Is there ketchup?” Wade asks, nonplussed, as if chicken nuggets appear out of thin air every day. God, Peter hates him a little. “These would be poison either way without ketchup.”

Peter has never really believed Deadpool when he acts like this, cool and funny and unaffected. It’s easy for a lot of the other Avengers who don’t try to see through it, but Peter is the one that gets stuck with him, remember? Deadpool isn’t uncrackable, just damn near close. So for once, _for once_ , it would be cool if the man acted a shred human.

“There is no ketchup with the nuggets that appeared out of thin air, no.”

“Well, I want ketchup.” Wade says, and a bottle of Heinz pops into existence.

Peter’s eyes bug out, and Wade just says, “Nice. Thanks Enchantress!” Before going town with the bottle. “See ya, squirt.” He says, taking the entire plate of nugs and disappearing out the back door again.

Peter is left alone, staring after him like he’s staring down the barrel of a shotgun.


	2. Day Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wade walks, Peter frets, and nothing productive gets done.

_   
_ The chicken nuggets probably don’t kill Wade, so Peter summons food and actually attempts to eat it, though it’s much harder to magic himself an appetite.

Wade disappears for a long time, and Peter lies awake all night, wondering what’s happening back home, if anyone is looking for them, how many people Spider-Man didn’t get the option to save.

He stares at the blank smooth ceiling until he can’t anymore, and does three laps around the big, empty house. He doesn’t have many friends, and the people that touch him generally offer him the opposite of comfort; but, he thinks, as he climbs back into bed, even that might be enough, right now.

* * *

Wade walks until he finds something living again, and by that time he can’t even see the house anymore. Lining the beach are dunes that stretch out so that Wade can’t see over them. But eventually, he finds a decaying coconut tree, lone in what was once a grove. It takes him a long time to walk this far, long enough that the sun blazes down through the hoop of the horizon, long enough for the night to swallow around itself.

It’s too dark to see anything at all, even the water. He knows it’s there, though, because the beat of the shore is relentless. 

White noise is a torture he’s actually familiar with.

There is nothing here.

This place is dying, Wade realizes. He kicks at the dead tree, which shakes, shudders, and then there is no lid left to cover the desperate anger he has at being trapped again. There’s nothing as far as he can see, just him and this cavern inside him.

He could walk forever and still there would be nothing inside eternity.

He slams a fist into the tree, hoping it will fall, but it doesn’t. It clings on, and he splits open a knuckle on the rough bark.

As blood drips to his wrist, pooling in the deeper scars there, Wade leans his forehead against bark, wishing for the easy slice of a katana, unsure of what, exactly, it would be for.

Eventually, he sits.

When the sky turns navy, in the fragile hour before dawn, Wade asks for water in a voice worn hoarse from sleeplessness. He is still in the shelter of the dead coconut tree, feet dug into cold sand. 

A water bottle appears just far enough away in the sand that Wade must get up to reach for it. He grimaces. It’s plastic. “Ever the environmentalist,” He says to the Enchantress, if she’s listening, if she’s here somehow.

Nevertheless, Wade cracks open the water bottle and lifts it to his lips, dismayed to discover that the water is lukewarm. “Stupid witch.” he mutters.

He drains the bottle and walks on, putting more distance between himself and Spider-Man and that stupid house with that stupid hammock. 

Sunrise is violet over the ocean.

Wade keeps expecting to encounter some sort of beast, or any enemy to fight, but all that’s here is sand and the gentle, foamy ocean.

He does not eat. He is not hungry.

Hours pass. The sun rises in an arc, judging him gently, as the sand begins to burn beneath his feet. The tide pulls in, rising to touch his heels, hardening the sand. The water is cool and turquoise, overly bright in the midmorning light.

He’s developing a headache and trying his best not to acknowledge it. Wade is, instead, humming “How to Save a Life” by The Fray under his breath, because that song continues to slap at all times and in all contexts.

It doesn’t work. Sometime in the midafternoon, Wade has to stop again, an ocean tide welling inside his throat. The coconut grove has long disappeared behind him, and the beach has not changed. It hasn’t devolved into yellow grasses, or craggy rocks. It’s the same white sand and the same ocean and the same unforgiving, cloudless sky. 

He keeps going. 

Finally, finally, a speck appears ahead. Half hidden around a gentle bend, there is definitely a building of some sort, far away in the heat-muddled distance. He’s walked for two days in one direction, and there has been nothing until now. Despite the exhaustion clinging to his body, Wade quickens his pace, his heart rate beginning to pick up. He digs his feet into the sand and lifts into a jog. Beside him, the ocean gets a little choppier, white caps forming near the horizon line.

There is sweat beading down his neck and under his arms, and his breath is hot and quick. But it’s there. Whatever ‘it’ is.

As it grows larger and larger, the brief excitement he’d felt upon seeing the structure turns into something syrupy-sweet, like dread. 

He is perhaps a half mile out when he realizes what the building is. It’s the house he’d woken up beside. The hammock sways gently in the wind.

He stops completely, as if hit by something. Two days walking in one direction, and all it did was bring him right back to where he started.

* * *

Ever meticulous, when Peter finally hauls himself out of bed, he combs through every nook and cranny of the house. 

In his bedroom: an empty closet, a chest of empty drawers, nothing beneath the bed. The case is the same for all three other bedrooms. 

Down the thick carpeted hall and into the linen closet: an extra shower curtain, one bottle of Coppertone that expired in 2004. An empty bottle labeled Vitamin C. Two beach towels, worn and ragged.

In the upstairs bathroom: nothing. No soap, no towels. The sink works. The walls are painted the color of sand, and there’s a tiny window above the shower.

Same for the bathroom downstairs. There’s nothing in the kitchen cabinets. There’s a space with a desk but no computer. In the living room, a deep, modular couch and a TV that works, but no phone.

Peter wants to throw something. He wants to attach a web to a very tall building and throw himself off it. He wants to--

He is interrupted from this growing, growling frustration by the back door sliding open. It’s Wade, covered in sand, the tip of his ragged nose sunburned. 

Peter flinches at the sight of him, and stands. “What the hell, dude.” He says, flatly. “Where have you been?”

Deadpool fixes him with a blank and dark look, mouth a taut, tight line. The air between them is humid and heavy. “Step one,” Deadpool says, a lilt in his voice that carries the words just short of being sung. “He says we need to talk.”

Peter can’t pinpoint what song he’s referencing, and doesn’t care to. “You figure out how to get out of here while you were out screwing around?”

Wade’s shoulders stiffen. It coils something around the base of Peter’s neck. “Let him know that you know best, because after all, you do know best.” Deadpool quotes again, and turns to go through the kitchen.

Peter follows him around the counter, through the foyer, to the base of the stairs. “Wade!” He shouts, at Wade’s pink and blue Hawaiian back.

Wade doesn’t turn. He continues up the stairs as if Peter hadn’t spoken.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> exposition exposition exposition. more interaction next chap


	3. Day Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Soft beach grasses, the slope of the dunes, pink and blue and yellow clouds dripping with sunrise. 
> 
> And before him, on the downhill side of the dunes, a road.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> two updates this week bc i 4got last week. oops!

Peter wakes up early and finds a bike in the garage. This strikes him as odd. Nobody rides a bike on the beach, so why is this little detail included? He inspects the chain and the spokes, the breaks, the wheels. The bike is in good condition, if a little worn. 

He leaves it there, along with the damp, set-swept smell of the garage, and continues toward the dunes.

He hadn’t slept much last night, not after Wade disappeared into his room and didn’t return, and it’s still early now, sometime in the predawn hush. The sand is cool beneath his feet. It starts sloping upward harshly, at a grade that Peter’s hardened calves are three days out from being used to. By the time he reaches the top, the vantage point he has is almost cool.

Soft beach grasses, the slope of dunes, pink and blue and yellow clouds dripping with sunrise.

And before him, on the downhill side of the dunes, a road.

* * *

At 11 am on Day 3, Wade realizes that alcohol in this universe works on him. 

He walks as far as he can down the beach, to the wet, foamy edge of the earth, and sits his ass in the sand.

The sea comes in, lukewarm and perfectly transparent to the clean sand at the bottom. He spends almost an hour tossing little volcanic stones into it just to mar its perfect surface, and the tide is just starting to drag out when he leans his cheek against his curled knees and says, “Fuck, I need a drink.”

Next to him, one appears. Coke-based, from the looks of if, and when Wade brings it to his lips it tastes like rum. Okay. Sure. He downs the whole thing in one, in the quiet. At the end, after all the ice hits him in the face as he tries for the last drop of liquor, he starts tossing the cubes into the ocean, instead of rocks. 

There aren’t people at home to miss, and there’s no reason to make this kind of connection, but something about this place seems infinite, like the sands in Kuwait, but just as small as the cell they’d stuck him in to trigger his mutant gene.

It makes him want to run. He’s good at that. Good at disappearing. He’s never had a home, has never seen a reason to need one. 

As always, it’s another fucking tragedy that he can’t die, because he wants to right now in an idle way that he always does, sort of like a rich person perusing the morning newspaper and going _look, honey, look at how nice this boat is! Wouldn’t it be a lovely beside our first boat!_ And then goes back to perusing, because they’re going to end up using their money to support political candidates and get out of doing things legally.

The metaphor got away from him.

“Another one, Invisible Butler.” Wade says, with a snap of his fingers. The second one goes down just as easily as the first.

There’s autonomy here, sure, but there isn’t freedom. 

And Spider-Man is avoiding him, which, yeah, that makes sense. First of all, Wade doesn’t have a suit, and it’s embarrassing that he has to subject Spidey to the slice’n’dice of his entire being. So, no blame here. Also, Spider-Man doesn’t like him, and the feeling is not exactly _not_ mutual. 10/10 would bang, but 10/10 also doesn’t want to be roommates. Mostly because Wade doesn’t like having roommates or friends or allowing people to see him for who he really is, which is empty and gritty and full of something like dryer lint: flighty, disgusting, useless.

But also because Spidey only hangs out with him because of some sort of obligation, in real life. Everything --seriously, _everything_ \- is some sort of gigantic inconvenience for him. So maybe he has a great ass and a great sense of humor but he makes it clear that he’s embarrassed to be around Wade. Which would be fine, and all, considering most everyone else is the same way, if it were actually true. There’s some muddled, watery hope that maybe one day they could be friends.

“And a third.” Wade says, and by the time that one is done his head is heavy. He rolls his neck around the feeling for a moment, and then grins with liquor-wet lips, hands in the sand. 

He orders three more at once, this time, and laughter rumbles through his chest as they appear in a semi-circle around him. He wonders what else the Enchantress will grant him here.

He doesn’t ask, though, because he’s not ready for the novelty of getting drunk to wear off. It’s been _so_ long, and for once Wade feels normal. Feel mortal, which is what he guesses is the novel part of it all. Hell, maybe this is going to kill him. Maybe he should be grateful to be here.

Water washes up to his toes. His head hangs heavy atop his neck, lips dry, the sun’s heat a casual contrast to the way his esophagus cools with each cold drink. He feels his features go soupy with relaxation without his permission.

So, of course, that’s when Spoilsport McGee comes in with his perfect face and stupid goody two shoes, though he isn’t wearing shoes, right now

“Hey!” Spidey calls from down the beach, climbing his way toward Wade through heavy, hot sand. “I’ve been looking for you.”

Wade just rolls his eyes and asks for a seventh drink. He’s going to need it. 

By the time Spider-Man gets closer, all of the new drinks are finished. “There’s a town!” Spider-Man says, excitable like he’s cracked some sort of code. “A town of, like, real life people. Just on the other side of the dunes. I can’t tell if they’re real or magicked. Super weird. I feel like we’re in the Good Place”

“Fabulous.” Wade says, sour. “It’s the Bad Place, though.”

Spider-Man plops down next to him, over estimating it. His arm knocks into Wade, and for a moment his sweat-slick arm slides down Wade’s, catching scars and fabric. Wade shrugs away, skin smarting. He rubs a hand down his arm, as if to soothe the scars. The soupy, drunk feeling he’d been swimming in early curdles into something hotter.

“You’re not wrong. None of them knew what a boat was.” Spidey says, dejected. “Nor had they ever even heard of the United States, let alone New York City.”

“So no closer to saving the day?” Wade says. “Some hero you are.”

It’s not supposed to be anything more than a joke, but it comes out just as sour as before, and this comment draws the air around them tight. Spider-Man scootches a little to look at him.

“What happened to island vacation?” He asks, slow. Wade can’t tell if this is a joke or not, so he tries for bullshit. It’s what he’s good at.

“Dude, you know we can drink here? And it works?” He says, shaking a plastic cup full of ice cubes at Spider-Man. “I’m here for a long time _and_ a good time.”

The vacation comment hadn’t been a joke, apparently. Spidey’s weird bare face and perfect brown eyes and stupid mouth twists into disappointment. 

“Yeah. Well.” He says, apparently unable to bluster anything else. He can’t even pretend that this answer isn’t lackluster. If Wade thought he was capable of doing it, Wade would almost say that his bullshit actually hurt Spider-Man’s feelings, for some reason. 

“I really think we’re stuck here.” Spidey says, as if he’s trying again.

Wade wants to ignore him. The conversation isn’t salvageable anyway. “Imagine not knowing what a boat is.” He says. Deflection. They’re not about to talk about how they’re mutually trapped here. It’s not a sleepover, and Wade doesn’t have any hair to braid. “What do they think the ocean is? A boiling pot of soup?” Wade mutters, “She’s so fucking unoriginal. This blows.”

Spider-Man’s gaze goes to the waves at his feet. “What have you been doing the past few days?”

Wade answers honestly. “Walking down the beach to see how far I can go.”

Spider-Man’s finger idly traces around the rim of the plastic cup that had housed Wade’s first rum and coke. It’s big enough for a double shot. By Wade’s count, he’s had fourteen standard drinks. If this were a Greek party, he’d probably be in some sort of trouble.

“Find anything interesting?” Spidey says. “On the beach?

“No.” 

“Okay.” Spider-Man says. “You should eat something.” And then. “I’ll make you something special?”

“Funny.” Wade says, because he doesn’t think Spider-Man can cook for shit. “Conch fritters.” He decides.

“My specialty.” Spider-Man says, and then they appear out of thin air. “You’re welcome.”

“I would also like another rum and coke.” Wade says, to which Spidey immediately replies. “Nope! He wouldn’t”

One appears anyway. Wade crams two fritters into his mouth and takes the whole drink like a shot.

* * *

They sit like that, in mostly silence, like they would on a rooftop after a long patrol. It’s not the same.

The tide goes back out, eventually

* * *

That night finds Peter in the hammock beneath a half moon and a handful of stars, listening to an unseen thousand of waves in the darkness, wondering if it would be worth it to build a boat, if only to traverse an infinite bowl of boiling soup.

He closes his eyes against the thought, because it’s not funny. He is a million miles away from anybody who cares about him.


	4. Day Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [me to you guys](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3vNS3qMibU)

When Wade was a lithe twenty year old, he’d killed someone on the beach at Normandy. (An irony that had escaped him then, but now he finds that it’s the only comical part.) The sand had clumped like wet, scarlet mud and it had gotten everywhere, salt and iron in one. The waves had washed blood down to the point of low tide, and the crime scene had looked like an explosion. 

His mark had been a young man, and Wade hadn’t asked many questions. He can’t remember the guy’s crime, but he remembers the watercolor canvas of reds surrounding his blown-out jaw. 

He’s remembering this on the fringes of sleep early in the morning of Day 4, and can’t quite pull himself from the memory for a few moments too long. His eyes open to a dull dawn, white ceilings. The bed beneath him is too soft.

At his side, he feels his fists curl into his hips, ragged nails cutting into skin, and for a moment he can’t breathe in.

The moment passes. His feet hit the floor.  _ Be the kind of woman that when your feet touch the floor, Satan says ‘oh shit.’ _

Wade’s mouth is fuzzy. He needs mouthwash. 

“Everclear.” He says, to the omniscient queen that rules his life now. “Your highness.” He adds, and is rewarded by the whole bottle. It’s not chilled, though. “Fucking wich.” He says. The bottle makes a satisfying crack when he opens the top. He tosses the lid; he won’t be needing it.

Ladies and gentleman, experiment number one.

This particular bottle of grain alcohol is 189 proof, and it tastes like paint thinner, but Wade knows it’ll do the job. He takes it in two swallows, three, four, before having to pull off. He’s no stranger to self-flagellation, but he doesn’t want to puke. He’s got something better in mind.

Still itching at the memory of blood and sand, Wade picks up the bottle by its next and throws open his bedroom door.

Across the hall, Spidey’s door is pulled shut. Wade looks at the bottle in his hand, and does something that is probably stupid. He crosses the hall to knock on the door. Waits. Knocks again. No answer.

(He’d wiped blood soaked sand from every crease in his body in the shower that night.)

Wade turns and leaves.

Downstairs and outside, Wade finds Spider-Man asleep in the hammock. In sleep he is tangled in the netting, mouth ajar. As Spider-Man, he has always been lithe and graceful, but as a person the dude is a human disaster. It’s still strange to see him like this, oddly human, difficult to hate.

Wade would almost feel sorry for him, if it weren’t already excruciating enough to be stuck here with him. They haven’t talked since yesterday. Wade wasn’t even hungover after. 

So, two great points to start off the day.

Wade leaves him in the hammock.

* * *

Peter wakes with third degree sunburns.

Well, not really. But it hurts to move, and getting up the stairs takes like an hour. He lets water as cold as the tap allows hit his chest and he doesn’t think he’s imagining how steam curdles against his skin.

He definitely isn’t imagining the pain. It’s indescribable. As Spider-Man, he’s been pulled to the seams of his skin, but for the first time in a long time, pain drives him to tears. He lets cold water stream across his un-burned back and cups himself around his chest as it heaves and burns on thousands of pinpoints of physical pain and mental anxiety. It’s too much. It’s all too much.

A long time ago, when Gwen was still alive and when the world was much less complicated, before MJ ripped his guts out, before all of it, he’d been fried nearly to the point of no return by Electro. He remembers curled in that cool, damp alleyway, alone and absolutely thinking he was going to die.

(His hair had smoked for hours afterward.)

He slaps his hand over his mouth before he lets himself dissolve into it, forces air back into his lungs, and forces his chest back into the spray.

The sun is too hot here.

* * *

Wade is not really sure how it happens. Four shots of Everclear, and he’s on his way to forgetting which way is home. His eyes can’t stay open. He hits the wall on his way up the stairs, has to take a break before he climbs another step.

(The guy had pleaded for his life, in French, and Wade doesn’t speak French)

Leaning up against the sink in the upstairs bathroom is Spidey, his skin a smarting red like he’d been freshly slapped by an entire brick wall. His face has one stripe across it, where he’d been lying on it. Wet hair lies limp on his forehead. His eyes are closed, cheek pressed against the cool porcelain of the sink.

Wade glances at his naked chest and then glances away, set on continuing toward his bedroom.

He’ll heal. They always do.

At his back, Spidey calls. “I wish it were anybody but you.” 

Wade doesn’t flinch, or stop. Just opens his door and shuts it behind him. It’s not like that’s a surprise.

He thinks, maybe, that when the Avengers save them, they’ll only save Spidey, and leave Wade to rot.

He wipes his face. Opens the door again.

* * *

Peter is trying his best to not feel sorry for himself, trying not to let his mouth get the best of him again. Luckily, Wade hadn’t even acknowledged him, and it’s not like there’s anyone else here to insult.

He’s just thinking of this when Wade appears in the door again. Peter looks up at him, wishing for some Aloe Vera or maybe a four day nap.

Wade’s eyes are glassy, like he’s not all the way there. He’s not focusing on Peter, and he’s leaning heavily onto the door frame.

For a moment, Peter feels a spark of white hot fear in his chest. What happened to him? Is this the work of the Enchantress? Is Wade just a fake android person, like the teen at the ice cream parlor, or the mom on the street with the stroller? Is there danger here? 

His senses tell him yes. Yes there is.

Not for the reasons he thinks. Wade stoops, slowly, to his knees, and Peter gets a good look at him, gets the pervasive scent of industrial cleaner and chemicals. It’s not the Enchantress, then.

Wade’s face is too close now, close enough for Peter to see the way his skin flakes up from the bridge of his nose, the watery oasis of blue in his eyes; the same color as the waves outside. 

“Go fuck yourself.” Wade says, with such vitriol that Peter flinches.

Peter jerks away, lands hard on a violet streak of burn on his oblique. His weight cracks from under him, and before he knows it he’s rolling in pain on the cool stone of the bathroom floor. Those tears he’d tried so hard before to swallow spring up again, the knobs in his spine sharp and hard on the ground. 

Wade stands and leaves him there, and Peter doesn’t bother to rise. 


	5. Day Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what's this? a short chapter? i mean,. i guess

Wade wakes in the middle of the night with his face tucked into the crease in the couch. He doesn’t remember how he got there, or why, or (briefly) where exactly the fuck he is.

Most of it doesn’t come back to him, but he does remember the whole convenient Stuck Here for Eternity thing. 

That’s about all he gets through before his stomach lurches in a greasy roll. He hadn’t eaten at all yesterday. Well. That he can remember. He remembers up until the afternoon, which he’d spent up to his hips in the water. There’s nothing after that, which must have been hours ago, judging by the amount of moonlight spilling through the windows. 

His head pounds. It’s worth it, though. God, the black-out is so delicious. When he was younger and less fucked in the head, black-outs used to be scary. You can't remember things! I didn't do that! I didn’t say that! I don’t remember taking bottle shots of 100 proof vodka and then blowing that guy outside on the bench!

Now, there are periods of his whole life that are like that, whether because of the trauma or because of some stupid villian with an axe to grind, take your pick. Either or! Now, he wishes he could just forget the rest of his life. 

Maybe this place is a gift.

Wade decides, right then and there, around a pounding headache and a stomach paralyzed with acid, that’s how he’s going to treat it.

“I would like a Five Guys double cheeseburger and a large order of their fries.” He says, to the darkness of the living room. There is no noise when it appears, and apparently the name brand was an inconvenience because the bag appears upside down, and most of the fries spill out onto the hardwood. “Stupid witch.” He says. “I’d call you a bitch but I don’t use slurs.” And then laughs to himself. “You’re lucky we’re never going to get out of here, because I would definitely take your small intestines and wear them like a feathered boa.” 

He scoops a handful of fries from the ground. They’re still hot enough to burn.

“How about some Heinz, huh?” He says. It appears. “Stupid witch.”

* * *

Peter isn’t asleep. He’s crawled up to the roof to sit, legs dangling over the side. It’s a beautiful, breezy evening. He wonders where that’s coming from: four days, and not a cloud in sight. The weather has been perfect and beautiful every aching minute that he’s been here. 

The mechanics of this place lie just beyond his grasp. Maybe, if Peter took the time for self-reflection, he’d realized that’s why he’s so out of his depth. That, and Deadpool.

Peter is so used to having his shit together. Not necessarily in his personal life, or in his financial life, but Spider-Man doesn’t screw up like this. Spider-Man doesn’t get flakes of sunburn across the soft skin of his cheeks, doesn’t get bitter and angry at anybody except for those that are actively shooting at him.

She’d even taken his webshooters, not that they’d be of any use here.

Peter rubs his thumb and forefinger around his left wrist, the bare skin there. Through the rustle of the single palm and the crash of the waves, there is the squeak of the sliding door below.

Wade steps out onto the back deck, a very large burger in one hand. His head pivots a bit, and then he obviously locates what he’d been searching for in the dark. It’s the half empty bottle of Everclear he’d been blasted on yesterday, cap still missing.

“Are you serious?” Peter asks, loud enough to be heard from two stories up.

Wade doesn’t jump. He is not easily scared. “As liver cancer.” He says, calm and collected and unbothered. Like always. His head tips back to peer at Peter, scars livid in the starlight. 

“Don’t--”

“Hey Sunburn, what the fuck d’you want from me?” Wade asks, sharp and clear and  _ sober _ . There is a flood of oily emotion into Peter’s mouth. Maybe Peter doesn’t want him to be sober. Maybe this is too difficult to face head on with Wade at his side. Maybe that’s never going to be an option.

Instead of this thought making him angry, Peter starts to feel overwhelmed, starts to feel heat in his face from something other than the burn. 

Peter swallows. “If we’re stuck here, let’s be civil to one another.” He says, hand coming tighter around his bare wrist. 

“Get fucked.” Wade says. And the seed is planted, the start of something bigger and uglier that Peter knows is going to grow inside of him until it bursts out. 

“Deadpool--”

Wade takes a swig from the bottle, swishes it around, and spits some of it out. He goes in for another gulp and swallows it this time. “Do what you do best, Spider-Man.” Wade says. “Make an enemy.”

**Author's Note:**

> see you next week kidz. in the meantime, if you comment i'd love you forever


End file.
